


Blocked

by Phiso



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Spoilers, Writer's Block, Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 14:19:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phiso/pseuds/Phiso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time in Ori's life, words fail him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blocked

**Author's Note:**

> For Apple. Special thanks to Neil Gaiman for unwittingly forcing me to write this.
> 
> And thanks to Kivrin for the beta!

Ori always had words on his side. Maybe he wasn't the most talkative, and maybe he wasn't the most articulate when he did, but when he wrote, the words would flow like fresh spring water. This was apparently a common trait in his family, as those who had known his parents spoke often of how charming they were, and many of his living relatives wove the most spectacular tales, both with their mouths and their quills. Dori and Nori were far better at speaking than writing, and when they wanted to make a sale or get out of a pinch, their words never failed them, either. It was like a recipe passed down from generation to generation: silence here, a quick splash there, a brief pause and then a crash. Manipulating language was in their blood, and if a dwarf wasn't careful they could easily fall under their spell.

But words failed Ori when the dust settled on what remained after the Battle of the Five Armies.

They had faltered before - when Nori would leave and not return for weeks on end, when he was left alone for too long without company, every time one of his brothers nearly got killed in one of their many close calls on the way to Erebor - but never had they disappeared so completely. It was as though his words had died the same moment as the line of Durin, lost to a world beyond that would never speak back. 

It hurt, knowing he couldn't write anymore. Words would come out, but they would be terrible; they had lost the poetry they had once had, and now read rough and painful, a jumble of sharp tumbling, torn edges. He was butchering his own language in the hopes of reclaiming it, and Ori mourned all the deeper, for now not only was he without the King he would have followed into the Halls of Mandos and the friends he had known since childhood, but he had lost his means of expressing his sorrow and guilt. It felt as if he were failing them, for how could the world remember their great deeds if there was no one there to write them down?

There was a great hole in Ori's chest where his joy used to live, where the source of his paintings and stories would reside waiting to be called upon to share. It was deep and heavy and dark, and it grew with every passing day he could not produce anything. It was hard, and frustrating, and defied all endeavors, and left him thoughtless and silent. They were gone, and his words with them, and now there was nothing that could be done to get them back.

And then, one day, in desperation and in a last ditch effort to keep his heart from caving in on itself, he wrote something down, something that didn't even touch the grief of losing his companions, but rather spoke of the ache of being deprived of the only way he knew how to cope.

And it wasn't so bad.

He tried again, the next hesitant sentence sitting primly beside the first.

It wasn't so bad, either.

And one by one, they came out, drops turning into a trickle, and a trickle into a stream, and before he realized what was happening they were flowing out of him as before, word after word in patterns he both recognized and didn't. And when he was done, he felt lighter, somehow, as if these words had been caught behind a stone wall in his chest and pushing with all their might to get out, and now that they were out, the wall was gone. The heaviness of death was still in him, but it was not as before; he felt as though now he might be allowed to mourn now, properly, in the way he knew best. 

He let out a deep sigh when he was finished, setting his pen down and leaning back. And as he looked at the words he had made, the ink still shining on the stiff parchment pages, he felt as though he had been given permission to heal.


End file.
